David Eckles gives $1 million to UC Berkeley's business school

David Eckles, who got an M.B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley's business school in 1973, gave his alma mater $1 million to expand mentoring programs for middle and high school students.

His gift will create an endowment to help pay for a new office at the business school called the office of pre-college programs. That office will try to build on work by the school's Young Entrepreneurs at Haas, or YEAH, program, which has reached out to poor students for 23 years, helping them get to college. The YEAH program will be one of several run out of this new office.

Another bit of the gift, $100,000, will be spent on a diversity and social impact fund for smaller projects at the business school.

Eckles is president of the Blueprint for Communities Foundation, and in the past he started and ran Helm Financial, which leases railroad equipment.